When it comes to seasonal sips, a refreshing hibiscus punch is more often considered a summer­time drink than a holiday-themed one. But for the Caribbean diaspora, sorrel is a Christmas must-have—and the annual quest to find the fresh blossoms at Caribbean grocers across the country has become as much a holiday tradition as making the drink itself.

Depending on where you’re from, you might know it by different names: sorrel in the Caribbean, flor de Jamaica in Central America, zobo in Nigeria, foléré in Cameroon, karkade in Arabic and roselle more generally. Whatever you call the plant, the consensus is the same—it’s delicious.

Known botanically as Hibiscus sabdariffa, roselle is part of the same genus as the colourful, trumpet-shaped hibiscus flower beautifying gardens everywhere. Almost all parts of this herbage are edible and used for various purposes across cultures. Planted in the summer and harvested in the winter, roselle is commonly grown annually and blooms into a cream-coloured flower before developing into a red sepal. This fleshy bulb is used to make hot and cold drinks, sauces, chutneys and confections.

The origins of Hibiscus sabdariffa are contested. A 1907 bulletin by the U.S. Department of Agriculture refers to roselle as an “introduction from the Old World,” namely West Africa. Traced back to the 16th and early 17th centuries, one of the more common hypotheses is that the plant made its way from Africa to the West Indies, the Caribbean and Asia through enslavement or forced migration.

Although Canada’s tundra is not the preferred climate for a thirsty plant, the demand is high enough to warrant shelves of dried roselle at big chain supermarkets and local ethnic grocery stores alike. Because it’s shelf-stable, dried roselle is always available. There are even companies producing pre-made hibiscus drinks, such as Nuba, a woman-owned company based in Oakville, Ont., that sources roselle from small farmers in Egypt. Founded by Amal Soliman and her daughter Gina El Kattan in 2018, Nuba’s products (which include dried hibiscus for those who prefer to steep their own drink) are available at Loblaws and independent grocers across the country.

It’s the fresh variety that’s a bit tricky to source and maintain, as the blooms last only a matter of days before spoiling. Once Christmas rolls around and the Hibiscus sabdariffa is ready to shed its sanguine bulbs, independently owned cultural markets will likely have your back. As always, it’s these small shops owned and opened by immigrants that help preserve and share global traditions.

Iesha Lawson is one of the founders of 2Sisters Caribbean Grocery, which first opened online in 2021 and then moved to a brick and mortar in 2022. Sharing the small space of a former convenience store with Whitby Jerk Stop, 2Sisters is the first truly West Indian/Caribbean grocery store to serve Whitby, Ont. “It’s a smaller town. It’s not as much traffic as I would want. But we have really quality customers here; they’ve become like family,” she says.

Lawson lives in Toronto, which is home to the highest number of Caribbean immigrants in Canada, but sees great benefit in catering to a small but growing community farther east. In fact, she’s already the local hookup for sorrel.

Last year, in the run-up to Christmas, people were “calling like crazy” to see if she carried any fresh product. Lawson says the unstable climate conditions of the shop meant she could purchase only two crates of fresh sorrel from a distributor in the east-end neighbourhood of Scarborough. Due to heat from the jerk restaurant’s kitchen and the lack of fancy misting sprays seen in large grocery chains, she wasn’t able to keep temperatures chilled consistently. “It’s one of those things that spoils fast,” Lawson says. This year, she started sourcing earlier in November and plans to do more research on how to keep sorrel fresh longer.

But all that is dependent on whether her distributors can even manage to import sorrel this year. A cursory call to Caribbean supermarkets across Toronto reveals that anyone who sources products from Jamaica is at the mercy of an industry hit hard by Hurricane Beryl. A Category 4 storm, Beryl is on record as the strongest July hurricane to hit the Atlantic. In Jamaica, it caused an estimated US$6.5 billion of damage and affected approximately 45,000 farmers. As an estimated 85 per cent of fresh food in Jamaica comes from the country’s producers, it’s hard to gauge which crops will be supplied to exporters as the agricultural sector slowly rebuilds.

While growing roselle in Canada is possible, Lawson notes that most Caribbean grocers will source their product from distributors. Each distributor and wholesaler offers a range of products from around the world that comply with requirements set forth by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Canadian Border Services Agency. Both dried and fresh roselle require permits and certificates that guarantee they’re free from pests and diseases. Before entering the country, they are inspected to ensure they meet all regulations.

“When I was a child, sorrel only appeared on the shelf during Christmas…dried sorrel wasn’t something that you ever saw,” says Kerri-Ann Williams, who immigrated to Canada in 2011. In Jamaica, she worked as a product manager at a sorrel processing facility. Once farmers brought their raw products, she’d inspect the sorrel and usher it from the cleaning, steeping and bottling phase to be distributed across the island. Once the product was bottled, it could sit on the shelf unopened for at least a month.

The homemade process is simpler, but still important to her. “It’s definitely a staple of Jamaican Christmas,” she says. “From a Jamaican perspective, [we have our sorrel] with a strong, ginger flavour. Because sorrel itself is a bit acidic, the ginger really enhances that.”

Unable to find fresh sorrel in Canada, she was introduced to the dried variety and has since become a fan. She now buys it from Ocho Rios West Indian Grocery in Oshawa, Ont., where she lives.

Sajjaad Kamalodeen also remembers fresh sorrel only in his native Trinidad and Tobago. Although he moved to Canada when he was 18, he remains a sorrel purist. He grew up with a sorrel plant readily accessible, and reminisces about the times he spent picking the flowers, cleaning them, boiling them and watching his parents add spices to make tea. Kamalodeen, who is Muslim, notes he has fond memories of visiting his Christian grandmother during holidays. “She would have a fresh pitcher full of sorrel drink. And when you’re in Trinidad, it’s always fresh flowers that were used. I never even knew of a different form.”

After he married and moved to Scar­borough, he was browsing Fusion, a local Chinese supermarket, when he saw they carried dried sorrel. (Today, the leading exporters of Hibiscus sabdariffa are China and Thailand.) He bought and made it at home, only to notice they carry fresh sorrel every December. Kamalodeen has prepared sorrel from fresh for the last five winters.

“It’s a good reminder of home,” he says, adding that his mom used to make it for him when he was a child. She’s since passed away. “It’s nice [to] remember her whenever I make it myself or have it, especially at that time of year.”

Chantal Braganza, deputy editor of food at Chatelaine, has fond memories of a roselle drink during her upbringing—though her memories aren’t tied exclusively to Christmas. “When I was younger, we stayed in Mexico quite frequently for extended periods of time. And it’s ubiquitous there. Almost any restaurant you go to, they have it, and I even remember as a kid getting it on free pour, endless refill drinks,” she says, referring to what’s known as agua de Jamaica, or an iced hibiscus tea. Roselle is also a main ingredient in ponche Navideño, a traditional Christmas drink served hot in Mexico. Ponche usually includes a variety of other ingredients, including sliced dried fruits, almonds, cinnamon sticks, star anise and an optional spirit like white tequila or rum.

“I feel like it’s very much a recipe that you can do what you want with, like the main base is hibiscus flower and it has cinnamon. [But] there’s some flavour notes that it has to hit,” she says. She’s made it both with fresh and dried roselle, the former coming from the Caribbean Corner in Kensington Market in downtown Toronto—though she says she prefers dried as it’s closer to the agua de Jamaica she grew up drinking.

Michelle Musindo’s memory of roselle is similar to Braganza’s experience of agua de Jamaica—it’s a simple drink, made mostly from steeping dried roselle in water, adding sweetener and drinking it chilled. She didn’t know to add spices until she was much older.

Musindo was born in Zimbabwe and was first introduced to bissap, the local name for Hibiscus sabdariffa, when she moved to the Ivory Coast in the 1990s. Her family then moved to Tanzania, where she found a similar drink was popular there. “I still drink bissap to this day,” she says, noting she carries dried roselle back to Toronto with her whenever she visits the continent.

“Because I moved around a lot, there’s little pieces of different places that I’ve lived that I attach to myself. Living in West Africa, bissap and plantain are two things that are not Zimbabwean, [but] they hold very strong sentimental value,” she says.

Tradition and memory are both crucial drivers to the preservation of culinary practices. That’s why a country like Canada has such a robust and diverse food market—by 2050, Statistics Canada expects that most of this country’s population growth will be propelled by higher immigration. But beyond nostalgia, Hibiscus sabdariffa has long been studied as a health food, rich in antioxidants and antibacterial properties. It’s used worldwide as a diuretic and as an herbal medicine to treat conditions like rheumatic diseases, stomach ailments and more.

Despite being native to the tropics and subtropics, roselle has become a mainstay in the north thanks to local grocers who ensure homes are well stocked with products that Canada might have never seen otherwise. But in a highly globalized world, we also have each other to thank. For Musindo, roselle’s remarkable appeal is how it connects disparate communities and cultures.

“Different people from different areas around the world have taken this drink and this plant and made it their own,” she says. “But it’s still celebrated and drunk the same way.”